


One last time, fight for me

by DieroteRosine



Series: KuroTsuki Week 2020 [8]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: #KuroTsukiWeek2020, #krtskweek2020, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Blood, Cyborgs, Cyperpunk, Day 8: Fiction - Cyperpunk, Fight Against the System, Gangs, Hacker, Kidnapping, KuroTsuki Week 2020, Kuroo Gangboss, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Revolution, Tsukishima Hacker, Weapons, World under the domination of robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:06:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25504126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DieroteRosine/pseuds/DieroteRosine
Summary: Rain drenched his sweater and dripped from his nose onto the muddy asphalt, his mind raced, played any possible out comings about his current situation, and he clenched one of his hands into a fist.He certainly hadn't been on the run for over half a year, just to be caught now, in a back alley, to make matters worse._____________In a world dominated by robots, Tsukishima, a skilled hacker, is the only hope for New-Tokyo to fight back against their oppressors. With the sudden help, in form of the gang leader Kuroo, a race against the time begins.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Series: KuroTsuki Week 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844776
Comments: 14
Kudos: 63





	One last time, fight for me

**Author's Note:**

> This is it - my baby.  
> At first I thought that the prompt "fiction" wasn't really my cup of tea, but then I couldn't stop writing.
> 
> I hope you will like my so far longest work for this #KuroTsukiWeek and I would love to read your thoughts about it in the comments :)

The sound of quick footsteps echoed in the dilapidated side streets, rain colored the city a dreary gray and only the bright neon signs shone out into the beginning of the night.

The bar on the corner of the street played music from the 80s and if you closed your eyes and listened only to the dingy melodies of the jukebox, you could almost forget what the world was like in the meantime.

Darkness of the night licked the buildings and while the rain continuously pattered on New-Tokyo, a black-clad figure hid between two garbage cans a few hundred meters from the bar.

A hint of blond hair peeked out from under the dark hat and light skin flashed again and again when the shape changed its position.

In the distance you could hear the croaky voice of the policemen on the patrol, they seemed to be examining the surrounding buildings one more time, still looking for the person who was lying flat on the floor, trying to suppress any noise.

Rain drenched his sweater and dripped from his nose onto the muddy asphalt, his mind raced, played any possible out comings about his current situation, and he clenched one of his hands into a fist.

He certainly hadn't been on the run for over half a year, just to be caught now, in a back alley, to make matters worse.

But he knew just as well that if they had brought their heat receptors close to him, he wouldn't be able to escape the Guardians - so what else was there to do than press and pray as close to the cold floor as possible.

There was a cawing and scratching over asphalt, the constant beeping of the robots, which had been replacing human policemen for months now and knew only one task - arresting, chipping and locking up every resistance.

The blond man exhaled with a pounding heart, they were now so close that he could see their LED light eyes flashing through his hiding place between the garbage cans and he already expected an electric shock to get him out of the world of consciousness every second.

Steam rose from the rainy streets, covering his vision in a blurry fog, and the young man held his breath - they were only a few meters away, not to miss the static whirring of their communicators in the silence of the night.

Just as one of the policemen snarled and turned directly in his direction, a shattering bang erupted right at the other end of the street and all the heads of the robots instantly jerked to the source of the noise.

"FE-253!" Came the announcement on the police officers' radios and the robots ran in the direction of the explosion, leaving a small gap in the street unguarded and that was all the young man needed.

Without hesitation he jumped up, the backpack in his hand quickly wrapped around his back and rushed down the rainy street until the police officers' noises were only blurred memories.

After a few minutes he reached the open streets of New-Tokyo and immediately came across the rigid faces of the mind controlled people.

The citizens of New-Tokyo marched motionless along the streets, not recognizable a single emotion on their faces, the brain had long since been taken over by the higher powers and was infested with the will to obey and to serve.

The blond man tried with all his might to take on a stoic expression and joined the crowd of controlled persons, eyes wandering left and right again and again, hands protectively closed around the backpack.

After the street had protected him from the gazes of the superiors for a while, the man soon noticed a movement in the corner of his eye that was getting closer and closer.

Maybe it was his reflexes that had formed after months of escaping, but he started running just as an electric shock cut through the night behind him.

"FA-999!" Immediately all the controlled persons stopped, blocked his escape route and the blonde man had to panicky tun corners in order to escape the attacks by the police officers.

For the second time that night he realized that he could only run away from them for a limited period of time, because after all he was only human - not a machine and should they've scanned his thermal image by now, an escape was almost impossible.

His legs carried him between the staring people, puddles colored the streets black and the rain whipped his face mercilessly with every step.

"Stop immediately! FA-999! Raise your hands! Escape is futile!” The creaking commands from the loudspeakers all around him made him run faster and the man slipped around a corner into one of the many side streets.

"You bastards have to get me first!" He called and continued to sprint, the cold of the night burned like fire on his skin and behind him the clacking noises of the running robots on the cobblestones were still ringing.

The young man glanced back, assessed the distance to his pursuers and hurried around the next corner, only to stop almost instantly.

His shivered when he saw the dead end right in front of him and at the same moment heard the robots arriving behind him.

That's what he got for being to cocky, he thought, and closed his eyes as he prepared himself for the electric shock.

How nice it had been to keep his mind all these month - little by little he had lost his friends to the system of destruction.

People he had loved now stared at him blankly, family members had been caught and never reappeared since.

And now the same fate would happen to him, as everyone else, he would forget who he was and what it was worth fighting for, just life to reproduce, plant his genes in someone he neither knew nor would see ever again, the head swept empty.

His two hands laid on the back of his head, he went to his knees and bowed his head.

"Those fucking bastards," he growled when he heard footsteps behind him, but fate seemed to intervene again tonight, because suddenly another explosion shook the street and the man was thrown forward by the force.

Gasping, he crawled away from the shock, scattered around him were some parts of a robot policeman, the LED eyes still staring at him from empty covers and the blond man got up as if on command and stumbled back to the intersection that had led to this dead end.

"Hey Blondie."

His head twitched and he already raised his arm to defend himself if necessary, but stopped moving when he spotted a man grinning at him from further away.

In contrast to the rest of the population, his eyes flashed golden behind dark sunglasses and he had a wolfish grin on his face.

A long scar ran across his cheek and ended in the beginning of messy black hair.

The man was leaning back on a motorcycle, amused to mend a knife between his fingers.

"Looking for a ride?" The black-haired man bared his teeth and nodded at the hole the explosion had left behind.

"Or do you want to wait for more of them to come?"

The blond man backed away a little, the backpack firmly pressed against his chest and observed the other with careful eyes.

The biker sighed and crossed both arms casually in front of his chest.

"Come on Blondie, who will be more dangerous?"

He flicked his hair out of his face and smirked smugly. "Me or the robo-fuckers, who seem to be pretty interested in this sweet ass of yours?”

The blonde man was about to reply that he was definitely not going to get on the bike with someone who called his ass "sweet" and behaved like a fucking predator, but the buzz that clearly heralded the arrival of more robots left him with quickly making a decision and he jumped on the motorcycle behind the black-haired man.

"Well, look who made the right decision. Now hold on tight, baby. It won't be an easy ride."

And with these words the engines of his bike roared and they slid around the next corner in the pounding rain and out into the pitch dark night.

The next thing the blonde noticed after driving through the deserted streets of New-Tokyo for at least 15 minutes was the entrance to an old warehouse far outside of downtown and deep in the suburbs.

The last insurgents had been settling out here for some time, but none of the townspeople really knew where and soon everyone thought it was a rumor.

Well, he seemed to have found the insurgents' hideout just then, when he correctly interpreted the knock pattern on the door and when after a few seconds the door opened with a whir, the blond man couldn't help but back away in surprise.

The black haired man pushed and steered him through a passage, that looked like they had landed directly in a noble nightclub.

Red velvet adorned the walls, paintings poured over them in large numbers and only when the blonde passed the many pictures, he figured that from each of them the dead eyes of surveillance cameras were staring at him.

The man behind him pushed him impatiently down the aisle until they reached a door on the right side and he was pulled through it with a little gruffness.

It instantly got pitch dark around them and he could barely feel a bag being put over his head before a knock on the latter knocked him out.

_"Tell me one thing, are you fucking insane, K.? You brought a hunted man to our hiding place? A hunted man we never heard of before and who's currently on the run? Did you forget everything we've ever discussed?"_

_"Watch your mouth, B. You have no right to argue with me at this point if I can kindly remind you of last year."_

The blond's head ached, his heavy eyelids opened just to be greeted with the sight of his own tied body.

Panicked, he glanced left and right, but only found himself sitting in a chair, tied up with parcel tape and the man whimpered as the cords cut his wrist.

"Ah." Came a voice behind him and he recognized it immediately as the biker's voice.

The man with the black hair slowly stepped around the chair into his field of vision, in tow a beefy guy with white-and-gray hair protruding from his head in wild spikes.

Now, in the sterile light of the room, the blonde saw more details that had escaped him in the rainy alley - the ears of the man in front of him were adorned with two helixes, looping down in a kind of dragon symbol. A black tribal tattoo ran from his chin to his shirt base and disappeared under the white fabric.

Part of his right eyebrow was missing and was replaced by another piercing. The scar on his cheek protruded brightly in the light and only now did the blonde realize that it was a relic of an electric shock.

His buddy next to him curiously leaned forward and looked at the blonde like an animal in a terrarium.

"K.," he murmured, "his eyes."

"I know," grumbled the black-haired man, who was obviously listening to the name "K."

"Hey Blondie.", Mister Universe stepped closer and built up in front of the blonde. "What's that about your eyes and this bag over there? K. told me you never let it out of your sight."

The young man was silent and pressed his lips together in a thin line when he stared back at the man's gaze, which started to weaken after a few seconds and the man backed away to make way for K.

Smirking, K. approached the blond man and again the wolfish grin flashed across his face as he leaned down and was soon on eye level with him.

"Tell us Blondie, can you speak at all? Or did they cut your tongue out before they lost track of you in the city?”

He clicked his tongue provocatively and then put a hand under the blond's chin, from which the blond man freed himself with a jerk of his head.

"Don't touch me, asshole!" He growled warningly and K. laughed.

"Well look at you, apparently you _can_ talk. You just wanted to annoy us a little. Tell me, Blondie, what's your name?"

The young man bit his tongue, his head bowed defiantly to the ground, not in the slightest interest in giving even a single piece of information to the two of them.

Unimpressed, K. backed away and left his field of vision when he went and a short time later came back with his backpack.

The blonde really tried not to let the panic show, but when K. started to open the bag and take out a laptop, he buzzed angrily: "Stay away from the laptop!"

K. stopped moving and raised an eyebrow. "Oh and why should I? You don't cooperate with us, then we don't cooperate with you either."

He held the laptop threateningly over his slightly bent knee and the blonde understood the suggestion. If he didn't work with them, they would destroy his technique and everything would have been in vain.

With a trembling breath, he straightened up as far as possible and glared at the men. "Ok, what do you want to know?"

"Well, I'm impressed. A second right decision in such a short time." purred K. and his buddy grinned knowingly.

"It's easy as it is Blondie, who are you, what's so important about this laptop and why were you out in the city center when it was teeming with cops?"

He accentuated each of his questions by coming closer again and standing directly in front of the blonde.

The latter raised his head and stared into the cool golden eyes before sighing.

“Since I assume that we aren't talking to each other with our real names here, I'll stick to my abbreviation. Call me T. Before the whole crisis, I worked here as a computer scientist in a large corporation, but in the meantime I've learned another tiny little thing.”

He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, K. took a surprised breath and the man behind him stuttered: "That ... that is..?"

"Yes, they also know me by a different name. "The Eye"."

"Shit K., this is the insane hacker, who snuck into “The Mom"'s headquarter last month and stole the data from the robots. The whole state is after him, _oh what do I say_ , if he were found, all other mothers would be so fucking relieved. How the hell did you get your hands on him? "

K.'s expression had changed during B.'s explanation. The previously mocking grin had given way to a thin, slightly nervous smile, but in his eyes one could clearly see the curiosity.

Almost as if he seemed to know deep inside that it would be damn dangerous to keep T. here longer, but at the same time he wouldn't do anything better.

After a brief moment, the black-haired man seemed to have caught himself again and leaned back before turning contemptuously to T.

"Oho oho so do we have a little celebrity as a guest today? But that still doesn't answer my question, why did you hang around like on the presentation plate in the city center, "The Eye"? "

He overstated his hacker name and T. snorted angrily as he leaned forward in his chair as far as he could.

"Didn't your great henchman over there already tell you? I cleaned up the damn main data server and was about to deliver the data to its destination.”

His gaze wandered to his bag and again K. went pale around the nose. "Please don't tell me that you have the data in this laptop here?"

He mumbled and his buddy behind him made a chocking noise as he thumped his arms over his head.

"Are you fucking serious?! You carry the data with you?! You hacked "The Mom" and did nothing better than peddling the data in the city?"

"K. we cannot keep him here! If they have you on a single surveillance camera as you help him, we're all dead, man! "

"B. Keep your mouth shut! I have to think!“, K. hissed and frowned, while B. nervously started pacing in the background.

T. leaned back and carefully scanned the room in front of him - apart from them was no other visible person in the room, the only pieces of furniture were a table and the chair on which he was captured right now.

K.'s distance to him was probably almost _1½_ meters, while B. was about _three_ meters away from him.

The numbers were racing in his head, his eyes still fixed on his laptop - the only goal was to get it back, move to hell out of this shithole and then deliver everything to its destination.

 _Two_ people, an estimated _four_ seconds response time, _one_ door, no windows.

He waited a moment until B. nervously turned his back on him.

That was his signal to jump up with his chair and ramming the back of his it into K.'s stomach.

Surprised from the sudden noise and movement B. was greeted with a flying fist, making him stumble backwards.

T.'s left hand opened and the tip of his index finger revealed a blade, that severed his bonds in a matter of seconds – enough time for him to grab his bag and taking a dive to door.

He had just put his hand on the doorknob, when he felt the cool barrel of a pistol on the back of his head, hearing a calm voice. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

As if paralyzed, T. paused and exhaled, cursing - there had actually been another person in the room besides them. But this one seemed to be so quiet that it had gone unnoticed by T.'s eyes.

Surrendered he bowed his head and raised both hands.

"Good boy. Now put the bag back where you just took it and sit back down like a cooperative person on your damn chair.” The voice had become a little sharper in the end and T. was just tempted to turn around to see who screwed up his tour so elegantly there.

But he didn't have to, because at the same moment he was grabbed by one hand and pulled around so that he could now see the entire room.

An exasperated groan escaped him when he saw another door behind his chair, which was wide open and behind were clearly visible several people who had drawn their guns.

"Did you really think we would just let you walk out of here after you brought the weapon into our house to destroy" The Mom"?", The question came from the gun bearer in front of him, a man a little shorter than T. , with tousled black hair and dangerously flashing blue eyes, who now pointed his gun directly between T.'s eyes and gave him a narrow-lipped smile.

On T.'s scrunched nose, the man twitched his eyebrow slightly and smirked: "What? Better be fucking thankful that I didn't splatter your brain around the room when you attacked B."

"And what about me?" That came from K., who had got up again and was now approaching hotly, his hand almost immediately closed around T.'s face and he pulled the blonde to his eye level.

The man next to them snorted unimpressed. "You should have seen the danger coming, B. stood with his back to this coward."

K. fixed T. out of burning eyes and growled softly. "How the hell should I have seen the danger come, A.? He was tied up! "

"And? Obviously he's not only a hacker but also a half cyborg. Did you see how he did this trick with his finger?"

Sighing loudly, K. let go of T.'s face and turned to A. "No? I was just holding my stomach into which this guy here rammed a damn chair, in case you forgot. "

Looking at A .the smaller man seemed to be rather moderately amused by the attitudes of the other.

In the meantime B. had also rejoined the group and held his slightly red chin. "Has a good blow, the Blondie. I wouldn't have thought it with his lanky body."

T. gave the man a half-indignant look, but said nothing, since the gun barrel was still aimed between his eyes and he was reluctant to carry out his mission because he hadn't had his tongue under control.

In any case, one thing was clear - there were far more people in this house than initially thought and none of them seemed to be pleased with his arrival - well, after he attacked two of them, he was able to do understand this to a certain extent degrees.

But at least they had knocked him out first and tied him to a chair, if they would have talked to him normally or simply offered him a hiding place for one night, none of this would have happened.

"So what do we do with him now?" Came from A., his gun pressed a little harder against T.'s forehead and the blonde stared coolly at the smaller man.

"He'll stay here for the night," K. decided, "tomorrow we'll take him out of the country and we'll be done with it. But the bag- " he reached for the backpack and pressed it to his chest, "stays with us."

"Forget it," growled T., ignoring A.'s warning eyebrow twitch. "If the bag stays here, I'll stay here."

"As if _you_ could decide that.", snarled A., but T. jerked around to the smaller one. "And as if _you_ could do _anything_ with the content of the laptop when I'm not there ?! Do you idiots have any idea how often I encrypted the data? It would take you months, if not years, to decode them without me being here! And when I look at the current situation outside, neither of us has weeks or months. We have days or hours before even the last people have lost their damned mind!”

In the meantime all three men stared at him cautiously and T.'s seized the opportunity to detach himself from the door and to wipe gun out of his face.

"You need me if you want to get out of this mess. So think about it.“, He took a step forward, his eyes now directly on K. "Either we play the game together or your little henchman shoots me on the spot and you're all dead or locked up in a few weeks."

There was a tense silence for a moment, in which both A. and B. looked at the black-haired man from the side until K. sighed in resignation.

"Put the gun down, A. He stays."

To say that the rest of their group wasn't exactly enthusiastic about their new arrival would've been an understatement, so T. was not in the least surprised, when he was rudely pushed into one of the warehouse's many rooms by a guy with a blonde mohawk and the door slammed shut behind him.

The room itself was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house, except for the cluttered entrance hall, and T. suspected the reason behind it was a protection mechanism – if the police would catch a whiff of their current location, they would've to be able to escape without leaving any kind of information behind.  
  
Which raised the urgent question for T. whether the group had only been founded during the crisis or - which actually sounded more likely - had previously operated in the well organized underground of Tokyo.  
The way they had hidden themselves directly in front of the authorities almost called for them being one of the many underground gangs from New Tokyo's founding days.

  
That would at least explain why they all addressed themselves with nicknames - no information, no useless knowledge, no leverage when you were captured.

  
With a few steps, T. crossed his new quarters and hastily pulled the curtains of his window aside, only to look at a red brick wall and a slight smile crept into the corners of his mouth.

  
"What did I expect? A room with ocean view? Guess for this I should've put a few yen and secret data on top of that.” he murmured to himself.

  
After all, he was at least apparently safe and in a room that he could cross without shackles, so they seemed to trust him at least to such an extent, that they thought another attempt to escape was unrealistic.

With a sigh, the blonde dropped onto the narrow bed and closed his eyes for a moment, the tiredness of the last few days almost instantly overwhelmed him, the pain of the nights he had slept in trenches and underground passages numbed his body and a suppressed groan escaped him.  
His body screamed for a hot shower, for warm food, for a soft blanket and fluffy pillows and it wasn't long before sleep rolled over him like a wave and T. curled up in a ball into a restless dream world.  
  


_"Hey Tsukki, look what I found while going out with Yachi today."_

_  
The boy with the freckles reached into his pocket and took out a small four-leaf clover, which he had carefully wrapped in a handkerchief. "Yachi said it was lucky to find one and I should always carry it with me."_

_  
Tsukishima leaned back in his chair and smiled at his best friend, who was already stowing the shamrock in his pocket._

_"Take good care of it, Yams, if you lose it, the misfortune doubles and I know that your head is always everywhere and nowhere."_

_  
His friend laughed softly and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment._

_"Well I'm going out with Yachi tonight. She said yes when I asked her this morning, so I could use some luck.”_

_  
"Hey!", Tsukishima punched Yamaguchi on the shoulder, "Congratulations, it was really time. Where are you going?"_

_“Oh, just to the cinema and then eating in this new restaurant at the end of the street. You know, that with these cool robot-waiters?"  
_

_Tsukishima frowned. "Yes, I've already read about it, but I find it rather creepy to be honest. Recently robots have been appearing everywhere to replace normal workers.”_

_"Oh come on Tsukki, don't be a such a spoilsport. I bet it's going to be really cool!"_

_The blonde turned on his chair and shrugged when his best friend left the room, happily humming to himself._

_  
When Tsukishima broke free of his computer and the thousands of codes late in the evening, he saw a handkerchief lying on the floor.  
He picked it up to dispose it, but at the same moment a small shamrock sailed out of it. The blonde paused in surprise and picked up the plant.  
_

_"What have I told him? Gosh, this guy would lose his head, if it wasn't screwed tight to his shoulders." he grumbled and put the sheet next to him on the desk. He would give it to Yamaguchi if he came back from his date in the evening._

_  
But Yamaguchi never came back._

_Not this evening and not the next._

_Tsukishima also heard nothing from Yachi and on the third day he started to search the surrounding streets._

_But even after a week, his best friend and Yamaguchi's girlfriend remained missing, Tsukishima was looking for day and night, he no longer went to work, ate nothing and all he could think of was that Yamaguchi had lost his shamrock, so that – whatever it was – had happened._

_One day Yamaguchi reappeared - standing out of the porch at Tsukishima's front door, but it wasn't the Yamaguchi who had left the house to go out with his girlfriend._

_There was no more life in him._

_The eyes were dull and looked into nothing, the otherwise glowing skin resembled an old parchment scroll, pale and yellowed. When Tsukishima asked where he had been all the time, the boy said nothing, just went quietly to his room and stayed there._

_So Tsukishima was one of the first people in the crisis to lose his best friend._

"Tadashi ... Tadashi please wake up. Tadashi, I'm so sorry. Tada-HAAAA! ” Tsukishima started with a cry from his sleep, noticing that he had panickedly clung to his bedpost, his friend's cloudy white eyes still burning on his retina.

He was about to release his fingers from the post when the door to his room was jerkily torn open and K. and B. and a third very tall man with gray hair armed into it.

"Shit man! What the hell is going on with you?! ”, snapped K., who had immediately grasped the situation and lowered his assault rifle. "What do you think of screaming around here in the early morning? I thought ... I thought they came to get you and we have to fight our way out now."

Tsukishima bowed his head, a hint of guilt gnawed at him, and he finally loosened his grip on the bedpost. "I'm sorry, I just had a nightmare."

B. snorted softly and pulled back into the hallway with the gray-haired guy, while K. paused hesitantly in Tsukishima's room and eyed him thoughtfully.

Then the man cleared his throat, walked uninterestedly to Tsukishima's only chair in his room, and let himself fall noisily on it.

At Tsukishima's questioning look, the man shrugged and pointed to Tsukishima's bed.

"Sleep now. I'll stay here for the time being so that half the crew won't be alerted again just because you have a nightmare. After all, I can just knock you out if you get too loud.“, The black-haired grumbled, but avoided direct eye contact and again a slight smile crossed Tsukishima's face.

"Don't worry, I almost never dream. So I'll be calm. But thanks anyway."

Tsukishima consciously ignored the other's sharp intake of breath and curled up for the second time, until this time his sleep whisked him away to a quiet dream world full of motley clovers, sunshine and sparkling golden cat eyes.

The next morning, when Tsukishima woke up rested for the first time in over a month, K. was gone, there was only a slight hint of cigarette in the air and Tsukishima stretched.

Tired, his feet carried him to the door and he knocked, hoping that they had ordered a guard to help him get, a toilet, and a hot shower.

As expected, the door opened a few inches after he knocked, and a grass-green cat eyes stared down at Tsukishima. It was unmistakably the man with the gray hair, because even if Tsukishima was not exactly small with his 1.90 meters, the man towered him another five centimeters.

"Yes?", The man's voice sounded insecure even if he cleared his throat immediately, apparently to remind himself that he was part of an underground gang and didn't have to be afraid of Tsukishima.

The blonde gave the man a crooked smile, tried to instruct him as soon as possible with his wishes.

"Hey would you have the greatness to take me where I can shower and freshen up? I've been on the run for over a month and slowly I'm competing from the smell with rats in the sewer system."

As if to check his statement, the man took a deep breath in front of him and immediately wrinkled his nose.

Actually, Tsukishima was only joking, but he had no problem if the fact that he stank helped him get out of this room and into the next bathroom.

He let himself be guided through the many corridors of the warehouse at gunpoint and found himself in a kind of conference room a short time later.

Just when he wanted to turn around to find out exactly why he was here, a door opened in front of him and a large group of men and two women filled the room.

The gun on his back rudely pushed Tsukishima into one of the many chairs, and as if the presence of the people around him weren't enough of a warning, the gun barrel remained pointed at his neck, the chilled metal a promise of what would happen if he tried to escape a second time.

Tsukishima snorted angrily and folded his arms in front of his body, looking at K., who had sat directly opposite of him in the largest chair of the table and was flanked on both sides by A. and B.

"Well good morning y'all.", K. leaned forward in his seat and folded his hands on the table in front of him.

"Now that each of us has been able to sleep about the events of the last night and we've been able to calm down -" a quick glance at A., who seemed to be playing with the barrel of his pistol absently, "I won't accept only vague answers from you today. We're not a welfare event here and not a coffee party either. Each of us is in direct danger if we keep you here any longer, so - what is your story, how did you get the data and what are you going to do with them now?”

Tsukishima giggled amused. "That's quite a lot of questions for someone who knocked me out and put me in a cell yesterday, right?"

One of the women at the table took a deep breath and K. also smiled amused.

"Well it's true, I knocked you out, but you got on my bike voluntarily, so it's only half my fault, isn't it Blondie?"

His lips again played around that wolfish grin that Tsukishima had noticed the night before and he followed the example of the black-haired man and leaned forward.

He commented frostily: “As you might have noticed, I hadn't much of a choice to make a practical decision for me. Should I rather let the robo-cops ramble me into nirvana or do I get on a bike with a guy, who obviously doesn't have enough balls to capture me without reinforcement? Mhm what would you've done in my place? "

"How dare you talk to our boss like that?!" snapped the second woman and it felt like a deja-vu to Tsukishima when another gun was aimed at his forehead, but K. waved and indicated the woman to sit down.

With an unsatisfied snort, she complied and K. continued to smile coolly.

"I see we can't get any further with you here. OK, then we've to resort it the old-fashioned way, I'm very sorry. “, He nodded to one of his minions and suddenly Tsukishima's arms were painfully turned backwards and his head pressed against the table until he couldn't move and K. sat directly in his field of vision.  
The man in front of him was so completely different from the man who had sat in his room at night and Tsukishima spat out.

"Bastard. Do you seriously think that you can beat the information out of me? You may not have noticed yet, but my own life is worth shit! I'm not doing this for me!"

  
"Oh and for whom then? What are you going to do with the data? Do you want to sell them?” That came from A. and the man stared coolly down at Tsukishima, the features neutral, but excitement raged in his eyes.

  
"I told you everything you need to know. You know who I am, you know what the data is and you also know what has to be done with it."

  
Silence fell over the group and all eyes turned to K., who had started chewing on his lower lip and running his way through his black hair.  
After a while the man cleared his throat and nodded. "Yes, you've already given us the first two pieces of information, but I want to hear from your mouth what you are going to do with the data. Who did you want to take it to when I saved you?"

  
Tsukishima's head jerked up, but was almost immediately pushed back onto the table by a member, so that he only pressed out between clenched teeth: "The explosion was yours?"  
  


"Oh sure. The first was pure coincidence, I only noticed later that I helped you escape, but when the police almost immediately got back on your heels, it seemed weird to me and I followed them. The right decision as it should turn out later."

  
A. snorted and B. grinned cheerlessly. “It's unusual for the cops to chase someone for so long, they usually give up after five minutes. But they were attached to you like flies and that caught my attention.”  
He laughed softly. "Who could have guessed that you were the number one enemy of the state?"

  
Tsukishima rolled his eyes, his arms still painfully on his back and the situation was slowly but surely becoming too stupid for him.  
They talked and talked and outside more and more people fell into willless obedience, he could no longer stand it.  
  


His right eye scanned the area - behind him a man with a gun, the weapon still locked, next to him on the right and left were _two_ people, knives and pistols, time to pull them down about _two_ seconds, _five_ people in front of him, all armed with firearms and the only unlocked weapon carried A.  
_Eight_ people, _eight_ weapons, time to attack less than _four_ seconds - chance to survive: low.

  
With a jerk, Tsukishima freed himself, pulled the two men next to him down and slammed his head back into the gray-haired man's stomach. He saw the men and women jump up in front of him and draw their weapons, A. immediately aimed at Tsukishima's head, but he was already behind the tall gay-haired man and held his own weapon to his head.

One of the women jumped forward, but was stopped by K.'s arm.

  
"Guns down!" Tsukishima snarled, "unlike you, I have nothing to lose, so if you don't take your damn guns off my face right now, you can say goodbye to your baby here."

  
The heart of the man in front of him pounded like that of a bunny, and Tsukishima tightened his grip on the man's neck as he pressed the gun warningly against his temple.  
K. eyed him with golden yellow eyes, his gun already slightly lowered and then clicked his tongue, whereupon all but A. lowered their weapons.

  
"A.", K.'s voice was cold and he grabbed his partner's arm before pulling him down forcefully. "Pull yourself together."

  
And with a look at Tsukishima he said: "The weapons are down, now let L. go."

  
"No." Tsukishima growled, "I'll let him go when you finished listening to me completely. Not a second earlier. Got it?"

  
The gang boss raised both hands and signaled that Tsukishima should begin.  
"As you know, the bag contains a laptop on which all the data from “The Mom" is stored, or, more importantly, the data that is needed to deactivate the robots and destroy the chips in people's heads. So - whoever has this data is holding the future of humanity in their hands.”

With a sigh, he turned to K. "When you bagged me yesterday, I was just about to deliver the data to the only place that had sufficient range to distribute the signal all over New-Tokyo."

  
"The Tokyo Skytree," A. murmured and Tsukishima nodded. "Yes the Tokyo Skytree."

  
"Fuck.", That came from B. and K. also seemed anything but enthusiastic about this development.  
"You know that the Skytree was basically converted into a fortress, right? No normal person even comes close to it."

  
Grinning smugly, Tsukishima lowered his gun and watched the man in front of him stumble quickly to his colleagues before Tsukishima briefly held the gun barrel to his own head and bared his teeth.  
"It's good that I'm not a normal person, isn't it?"

  
With these words, he held out his hand and showed the people present how his left index finger changed from a normal finger to a knife, a lock pick and back to a finger in a matter of seconds.  
"I basically get in everywhere I want. Not least because of this little treasure.“, He clicked and pointed to his right eye, which he got his nickname “The eye” from.

  
B. curiously leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. "What exactly can the thing do?"  
"Oh, you would be surprised.", Smiled the blonde, but didn't owe the others an explanation.  
"Only one thing is important - I will bring this bag to the Skytree, whatever the cost. I don't give a damn whether you help me or crawl here for the next few weeks until you are gradually smoked. But one thing I can say, I won't be discussing what happens next for a second longer, because you know that.”

  
He slammed the gun on the table and swept it towards K., who caught it with one hand.  
"I'm going to take my bag, one of your bikes, and then I'm going to fuck these bastards. Do what you want, maybe you will read it on social media in a few days if I did it."

  
The men and women stared at him in silence, and Tsukishima waited another moment before he clicked his tongue and turned. "What else did I expect from an underground gang? The big ones when it comes to crooked things, but as soon as the fate of the state is at stake, y'all nothing more than terrified babies."  
  


"Why are you doing it?"

  
The question came unmistakably from A. and Tsukishima stopped moving.  
He sighed softly, head still lowered, and shrugged.

"Because I can't stand losing more friends."

  
There was a rumble and K. growled: "A. what you up to?"  
Suddenly the man with the blue eyes appeared next to Tsukishima, his hand tightly closed on his pistol, his eyes cool and full of conviction. "I'll go with him."

  
Tsukishima raised an eyebrow in confusion, expecting a lot, but not with the support of the person who had tried to kill him twice in the past 12 hours.  
But something had changed in the man's demeanor, a melancholy hint of guilty conscience hung in the air.

  
B. next to K. raised to the floor. "A., please think about it. You don't owe anything to anyone. Not to you and not to them."

  
"B!", A. spun around and literally hissed at the man. "You know exactly what I swore them! And if you would even feel a single fucking thing for me, you would let me go now!”

  
B. drove back somewhat surprised, but almost immediately a warm smile appeared on the man's face and he shouldered his baseball bat. "Seems like there will be three of us then, doesn't it?" The man grumbled and came around the table to A. and Tsukishima.

  
"No.", all heads turned to K., his hands played around Tsukishima's weapon and he smiled amused.  
"Four. We're four."

Since Tsukishima had been lovingly kidnapped by K. and his gang a day ago, it hadn't stopped raining.  
Gray clouds hung like inedible cotton candy over New Tokyo and bathed the streets in drizzle, while isolated trams passed lifeless and deserted through the city center.

Behind one of these trams, unseen by the thousand cameras and policemen, were four young men watching the Skytree, which sent its dim light out into the rainy city at some distance.

Tsukishima crouched behind a power box and, like the evening before, pressed his backpack protectively to his chest, but this time three other men flanked him, all armed and definitely not on good terms with the police.

A. leaned over a wall, zoomed in for five minutes on every movement that took place in front of them and spoke quietly to B., who was leaning against A.'s legs and sorting his backpack for the umpteenth time.  
From the corner of his eye, Tsukishima could see the shiny surface of a sword, several pistols and an assault rifle, that he had placed on the floor next to his baseball bat.  
Some hand and smoke grenades were on B.'s gun belt and the man with the gray-white hair was chewing on chewing gum, the sound beside the rain the only thing that cut through the night.

  
K. knelt a little to one side with Tsukishima and seemed deep in thought as the next tram rushed past them and enveloped them in swirling drizzle.  
The man next to him was the one who had stayed in Tsukishima's room last night and not the boss of an underground gang who had to protect his subordinates from intruders and traitors.

  
Another train rumbled past them, the brakes screeching at night and Tsukishima ducked slightly behind the electrical box until the steel vehicle was out of sight.

Humming softly, K. changed the leg on which he was kneeling and stroked a few stray raindrops from his neck, his eyes still fixed on the distance, aiming for a point that Tsukishima couldn't see.

  
K. seemed to feel at home out here in the deserted streets of New-Tokyo, because the man didn't exude any tension despite the situation.  
Perhaps it could've been because he grew up here, Tsukishima thought, shaking his soaking-wet hair as the rain started running into his borrowed jacket.

  
Now that he thought about it, he knew nothing but the nicknames and the fact that they were members of a gang about the men with whom he would go on a suicide mission in a few minutes.

  
"K.?", His voice barely came against the rustling drums of the raindrops on the wet asphalt and it took a moment for K. to lift his head and fixate him with golden eyes.  
"What made A. come with me? I didn't really have the feeling before that he was visibly attached to me or my plans? "

  
K. took a deep breath and then nodded somberly. "We don't actually talk about it, but since we are on a safe trip to death or lack of will, he will certainly not mind if I introduce you a little bit to our motives."

  
The man pulled his jacket a little closer and waited for the next train to rush past before he started talking.  
“A.'s family had a well-visited family establishment before the crisis. They rented their rooms to tourists and gave them small tours through Tokyo, quasi host and tourist guide in one. When the crisis hit us and more and more people just disappeared from the street, his family made it their job to provide temporary shelter to helpless souls.”

  
He kicked a stone with his foot to the side and sighed. “Of course, hiding refugees was strictly forbidden and was severely punished. One evening two emaciated men stood in front of A.'s front door and asked for help, one of the two was injured and needed medical care immediately, otherwise he would die. A.'s mother did not seem to have thought long and brought the two into the house."

  
K. broke off again and the next stone that was kicked flew farther than the first. "In the house it turned out that the two worked for the police and A.'s parents were immediately arrested. A. just managed to jump out of an open window into the back yard and escape before the two could catch him.”

  
K.'s face had darkened during his story and Tsukishima caught his breath because he sensed that it should not be the end of the story.

In fact, K. took a deep breath and continued quietly: "As already mentioned, it is forbidden to offer someone shelter and yet, especially in the first few weeks, more and more “rat nests” were found, as the state had called them. An example should be made to frighten imitators.”

Tsukishima closed his eyes when K. gritted his teeth.

"They publicly executed A.'s parents. In the middle of the Skytree square, broadcast live on TV. B. found A. on the evening of the broadcast, when he tried to free his parents and almost got into the hands of the police himself. Since then, A. has had an overwhelming hatred of strangers, and when I brought you with me yesterday, he must've feared that you were a Traitor and would destroy his only family that remained."

Tsukishima felt numb - that at least explained why A. had approached him with so much suspicion and hatred, but what had changed his mind so much that he had offered to accompany Tsukishima first?

As if reading his mind, K. stepped closer and crouched right next to Tsukishima, lighting a cigarette and inhaling the stinging smoke silently.

"I think he came with you because he shares your view. And B. and I do that too. None of us want to lose another single friend and see a family member with white eyes standing in front of you. ”

Another puff of smoke.

"For me it was my best friend. You know, he was also a geek like you -" Tsukishima skilfully ignored this comment, “He almost never left the house. One evening we had to do an assignment together from the gang and he should've waited outside the target building.”

K.'s gaze wandered into the distance again. "When I came back, he was gone and I haven't seen him since." His voice trembled with suppressed pain and Tsukishima saw out of the corner of his eye how K. clenched his hand into a fist.

“With B. it was the team members. He was on the side of a very successful volleyball team and now he's the only one who's still there. We lost the last of his friends to the brain chips two weeks ago.”

There was silence over the scenery and Tsukishima's head was racing, a stinging headache spread across his forehead and he absently massaged his temples.

So each of these group members seemed to have lost someone important to them - that's why they were here.

They wanted revenge, they wanted justice and they didn't care if they would die on their way since they had now the only chance to somehow get everything back on track.

And for some crazy reason, a fateful coincidence, their paths had crossed with his, tangled, and now led straight to the shining tower at the other end of the street with a tiny hint of hope.

"My best friend," K. raised his head when Tsukishima started speaking, "he was one of the first to disappear. One evening when I was looking for him, I ran into some less friendly people. This -”, he pointed to his right eye, “is the result of an explosion. The fragments of the grenade shredded my glasses and my eye too. I lost my finger when I tried to protect my other eye."

Tsukishima ducked his head and wrapped both arms around his torso. “I was found by a doctor who had been studying robot technology for a long time and was able to at least partially save my eyesight. This eye here has a special analytical ability. When I look at codes or passwords, I can decrypt them with my eye. That was also the reason why I was able to infiltrate the building of "The Mom". In the end, my great secret skills are nothing more than a cheap party trick.”

K. next to him was silent for a moment and Tsukishima was just about to rise ashamed when a hand closed around his arm and golden eyes fixed him firmly.

"Never say that your skills are useless or a trick. It is you who gave us the decisive weapon against this shitty fiasco here, I don't give a fuck whether you had to lay back on your eye, your knowledge or other means. T., you are the first spark of hope we've had in a long time and you were right. We could've continued to hide, but then we would all end up like our friends - willless sheaths, stripped of the only thing that makes us human – hope.”

And with these words, the man with the black hair pulled Tsukishima to himself and into a short, powerful hug that robbed the blonde of any air to breathe.

"Let's fucking show it these bastards. For our friends.”, K. murmured in his ear and Tsukishima swallowed.

"Yes." He raised his head and stared at the tower in the distance.

"Let's burn the city down."

Getting into the Skytree turned out to be much less difficult than initially thought.

After A.'s analysis of the situation, they managed to close a gap between the guards and get through a hole in one of the fences to the secured area of the tower.

From there it was only a short hop to the entrance to the tower, but it was guarded by two robots.

A distraction with smoke grenades and two targeted punches with B.'s baseball bat later, the four men stood uncertainly in front of the large glass door and looked at each other in silence.

"There is no going back after that, you must be aware of that," K. murmured, glancing at his two friends, who were staring up at each other with their clasped hands and at the hundreds of feet of steel, glass, and most of all, police officers-robots with brooding facial expressions.

"What are we waiting for, let's do it.", A. bowed his head and his mouth played a requesting grin, the hoped revenge of the man was finally within reach after all the months, the danger seemed to only add to his mood and B. wrapped an arm around the smaller man, grinned and bared his teeth.

"Can't wait to hit a few robo-cops in the head."

Tsukishima felt an excited tingling in his stomach area at the words of the two and he couldn't help but smugly smile.

With a raised eyebrow, K. fixed each of them, scanning with his eyes one after the other, almost as if he wanted to memorize every little detail of the people one last time, and then a smug grin darted across his face.

"Well then let's start.", He shouldered the assault rifle and flicked his pocket knife back, "remeber the plan. No matter what happens, T. must get to the top of the main data server. So we can expect two viewing platforms and lots of robot bastards. The server room is on the second platform directly across from the elevator and if T. made it there, how many minutes will it take?"

Tsukishima frowned and did a quick calculation. “Probably not more than ten, but definitely not less than eight. Just give me as much time as you can, ok? "

B. laughed softly. "Sure, I didn't mean to have me killed first."

Humming A. licked his lips and closed his fingers around the pistol in his hand, his eyes fixed on the door in front of them.

"Then let's clean up here and, if possible, only die when we have freed Tokyo from the hands of these fuckers."

And with these words A. kicked the door in front of them open, B. in his back and K. held Tsukishima one last time before they followed the other two.

"Take care of yourself, Blondie. Don't let the whole thing be in vain."

For a moment, two pairs of eyes fixed and silent promises were exchanged before they followed their partners and entered the first level together.

A loud bang immediately drew her attention to A., who had focused his assault rifle on one of the robots and was just shooting his entire magazine into the opponent's LED eyes.

B. rushed past them, holding his thumb up before the next explosion shook the tower and A., unimpressed, wrinkled his nose.

Tsukishima ducked behind a pillar when a short time later two robots appeared on the corner and came running towards them with flickering stun guns - Bokuto got the first off his feet with a bone-crushing blow from his bat and smashed the battery with another blow, before K. ducked under an electric shock and shot the robot between the eyes.

A. approached with interest, eyed the destroyed shells in front of him, and then stepped vigorously into the second's head.

After four more kicks, he let go of the smashed metal skull and smiled broadly at his partners. "I would say Stage one is clean. So get on the elevator and prepare for the next wave."

With these words, the smallest of the group strutted away and B. watched him grinning absently. "God, I love this guy," the man with the white-gray hair murmured and hurried to follow A. to the elevator.

"When were you going to tell me that A. was such a damn sadist?" Tsukishima smirked and K. smiled. "He's not. He's just angry right now. Otherwise, the boy can't harm a fly. "

"Maybe not the best prerequisite for being a member of a gang, is it?"

K. shrugged. "We're not bad boys, if you want to express that. Under my guidance, no one has ever died, so lower your prejudices a bit, okay? "

Mildly amused, Tsukishima followed the black-haired man and lined up next to A. and B. in the elevator, the floor already littered with metal parts and empty cartridge cases.

"What will we expect when we get to the top?"

B. leaned against the wall and had his hand barely visible clasped with A.'s.

K. hold his weapon and frowned. "I've no idea. At best, a few more robots, but they probably secured the control room better. Wouldn't be surprised if we meet humans."

Tsukishima raised his head and asked confused. "Humans? I thought "The Mom" had been exchanging employees with androids and robots for months? Are there still real people who work for them? "

Kuroo nodded, taking a quick look. "Yes, some have not yet been exchanged. A couple of the bastards have been trying to find our hiding place for a few weeks, so- ”

"That's why I was against keeping you with us," growled A. and reloaded his pistol as he eyed Tsukishima.

"Because I don't want to lose the rest of my family as well.", He gave B. a barely visible look and the man at his side grinned sadly.

Silence laid over the group until a loud "ping" announced the arrival in the second and final level.

K. rolled his shoulders and cracked his fingers before taking another look at the group and nodded. "Good luck and take care of you."

Tsukishima wanted to answer something, telling them that everything would be fine, then they heard footsteps from the outside and Tsukishima could just throw himself on the floor before the door of her elevator was blown apart by an explosion a second later.

He heard K. scream, A. cursing and B. crawled in Tsukishima's view of the elevator floor, a grenade in his hand, before another explosion tore their view.

All Tsukishima heard was a painful cry from A., B. who screamed in panic and the sound of bullets that shattered the glass over their heads.

A loud, absolutely frightening crunch sounded and then a severed robot's head rolled onto the floor next to Tsukishima, the LED eyes still open and the mouth opened in a silent scream.

"Shit shit!", B. knelt next to Tsukishima and only now did the blonde see a puddle of red paint on the glass floor of the elevator and he raised his head in panic.

In B.'s arms was A., a hand-sized stain on his right side of his chest was darkened by blood and the man whimpered cursing as B. tried to stabilize him.

K. was right next to them, hands clasped on the wound on A.'s side, while the smallest man in their lap paled from second to second.

B.'s voice overturned as he turned to K. and Tsukishima's heart almost stopped when he saw B. protectively but helplessly pressing A. against himself.

"Kuroo! He was hit! At least one bullet, he dies! "

It didn't seem to interest any of them that B. had just given the name of their boss in a subordinate clause, all that mattered was A., who looked at the scene in front of him with dim eyes and silent tears ran down his cheeks.

  
"Kuroo! What can we do?! ”, B. stared at A. desperately and suddenly something clicked in Tsukishima and he hastily took a step forward, pushed Kuroo aside and released B.'s hand from A.  
The man was about to knock Tsukishima away when the blonde put his mechanical index finger on A.'s wound and sank the knife blade into the man's chest with a practiced movement.

  
Blood splashed over the back of his hand, A. whimpered in pain, turned under Tsukishima's hands and howled as the sharp knife cut deeper, looking for the bullet.

  
Only now did Tsukishima notice that tears were running down his cheeks too, and he muttered under his breath. "Everything will be fine, A. I will not let you die. Not now."

  
"A ... Ak.", The man below gasped and seemed to nearly pass out in pain when Tsukishima suddenly came across a small object and almost cheered with relief.  
The handle it took to remove the bullet was far less strenuous than cutting deeper into the chest and shortly afterwards a small bullet rolled onto the blood-soaked floor next to them.

  
B. immediately jumped to his aid, kept A. upright when Tsukishima turned to Kuroo and looked at him seriously. The black-haired man understood and handed his lighter to Tsukishima.  
Under B.'s nervous looks, Tsukishima heated his knife and stared into A.'s eyes, who was now half-passed out.

  
"It will hurt immensely in a moment, but I promise it will be over soon." And with these words Tsukishima pressed his hot blade onto the bleeding wound.

A.'s entire body went up, a shrill cry rose from his throat before the man passed out and collapsed.

  
But it was done - his bleeding was stopped and the bullet was removed.

  
Tsukishima stared at his blood-soaked hands in disbelief, the fingers trembled and tears dripped onto his palms.  
B. was the first to say something and before Tsukishima could react, the big man had thrown himself around his neck and cried unstoppably in his shoulder.

  
"Oh god T. Thanks! I thought I lost him! I- I- ”, he broke off and continued to sob as Tsukishima held him helplessly and swallowed his own tears.

  
"Tsukishima," he muttered, still dazed by the situation he was living through, and breathed in, trembling. "My name is Tsukishima."

  
B. just pressed him closer and sobbed. "Thanks Tsukishima! You saved the love of my life!"

  
Kuroo next to them also breathed in trembling, but managed to release B. from Tsukishima with a slight hand movement and looked gratefully into the blond's eyes.  
"Tsukishima, huh?" He sighed and then smiled narrowly, "Kuroo, Bokuto, Akaashi, nice to meet you. But I think we still have something to do. If we're done, we can do all the introduction again."

  
As if his words were an indicator of another incident, there was a loud rumble from the aisle in front of them and Kuroo grabbed his weapon just in time before another robot came rushing around the corner and could be brought off his feet with a targeted shot.

Tsukishima had already completely repressed the fact that they were still in danger and the thought that he might get caught in the hail of bullets again made him jump up.  
Kuroo and he slid to the next corner, the wall offered at least some coverage and from the corner of their eye they saw Bokuto pulling Akaashi out of the elevator behind a post.

Shortly afterwards the man followed and knelt next to Tsukishima, the gun at the ready and a murderous expression in his eyes - this guy was ready to shoot everyone who came too close to his partner.  
It had been a big mistake for the robot bastards to choose Akaashi as their first victim, because now they had a humanized tank against them that would not allow Akaashi to bend another hair.

  
"Don't worry about me, I'll clear the way for you!" Growled the man next to the blonde and almost on cue Bokuto sprinted, in one hand a baseball bat, in the other an assault rifle and the next thing that Tsukishima heard, was the sound of breaking metal parts.

Kuroo gestured to follow him and they ran down the hallway that Bokuto had cleared, constantly avoiding flying robotic parts until another door appeared in the distance in a smaller room.

A feeling of relief flooded Tsukishima, the control room was in front of them, so they had really made it and he was about to turn to Kuroo when suddenly a hard blow hit his head and he slid several meters through the room.

"Tsukki!", Kuroo turned away from one of the robots and could just jump in front of Tsukishima before the next blow would have split his skull with certainty.

In front of them stood two men, clearly human, pointing their iron bars at Tsukishima and Kuroo.

"Look, look," The Eye "and “K."”, one of them growled and spat to the side. "The Mom will be overjoyed to hear that we've found not only the crappy hacker and his data, but also the gang boss who has been making our lives difficult for months now."

Tsukishima's head throbbed with pain and he was sure that his temple was bleeding like crazy, his jacket had turned red so quickly.

Kuroo stood up in front of Tsukishima, arms wide and fixed both men out of cool eyes.

"What's your fucking problem? You're also human, why are you standing up to us?!”, the black-haired snarled, but the two men just laughed.

"Are we? Are we human beings? What makes us human? That we have small fragile bodies that give in so easily if you hit them long enough? Or that we die if bullets rip us apart?”

The first stepped closer and Kuroo's knuckles turned white, so hard clung the man to his gun.

"The thing is, The Mom has promised us that we can live freely, in return we only have to make sure that all freedom-seeking idiots like you get a small, pretty chip planted in the brain. Easy, isn't it?"

Tsukishima backed away a little, the eyes kept wandering to the door next to him, it was so close - their goal was in front of him, less than three meters away and yet there was no way to get past the men without running into direct death.

"Oh yeah," the second man said, "how come you got together with our little escaped hacker here? I always thought you should stay out of everything that could be even a bit dangerous and then you bring the most wanted man in the country into your midst. Was that so smart?"

Kuroo bared his teeth and turned again so that Tsukishima was right in his back.

"I wouldn't open your fucking mouth if I were you, there are only two of you and I can handle your little metal bars on my own."

The two men grinned broadly and Tsukishima knew something was going to happen the moment they jerked to the side - but suddenly there was a loud crack and before either of them could react, one of the men got hit by a baseball bat right the back and toppled over in front.

Bokuto's blow had been so powerful that the bat was shattered on the impact and Bokuto was now without a weapon in front of the second man, who responded immediately and aimed his electrogun at Bokuto.

Kuroo screamed, aimed on the other man in sight, and two loud shots broke the chaos.

With eyes wide with horror, Tsukishima stared at the scene in front of him until a dull rumble signified a body falling over.

But instead of finding Bokuto also covered in blood on the floor, the smoke from the electropistol settled and Tsukishima's throat escaped a gasp.

Akaashi knelt in front of Bokuto, his hand trembling against his cheek, staring coolly at the second man's body in front of him, which had been struck down by Kuroo's bullet.

Bokuto absolutely did not understand what had just happened, because his gaze wandered completely overwhelmed between his partner and Kuroo.

"What?"

With a painful movement, Akaashi turned to them and Tsukishima was speechless again.

A long open, burn-like wound stretched across the face of the black-haired man, unmistakably from the fired taser pistol.

The electric shock seemed to hit Akaashi directly in the face when he threw himself in front of Bokuto to protect him from the shot.

From now on, just like it was for Kuroo, a scar would decorate his face, an eternal memory of this moment and it was still for a heartbeat until Akaashi seemed to catch up with the sudden pain and threw himself into Bokuto's arms.

He hugged his partner in a daze and only gradually did his life spirits come back, so that only a few moments later a loud sob filled the room and the two men held each other with tears in their eyes, murmuring softly expressions of love, while Kuroo helped Tsukishima to get up.

The man in front of him turned Tsukishima's face to the side with a finger, almost like the night before when he had looked closely at Tsukishima's eyes, but now there was a seriousness in the other's features that hadn't been there before.

A soft fingertip ran over Tsukishima's laceration and the blonde winced at the light touch.

"Sorry”, Kuroo murmured, hesitantly pulling his hand back and then taking a deep breath.

"I didn't react quickly enough."

Tsukishima almost let out an incredulous laugh, instead leaving Kuroo to buff his shoulder with twitching corners of his mouth. "Oh yes, how could you dare to save my life? I'm really horrified, Kuroo."

The man in front of him seemed speechless for a moment, but quickly recovered and even let himself be carried away with an apologetic smile.

"Tsukishima. If you weren't the salvation for our city, I would have seriously considered punching you now. But since I have to be afraid that you would collapse under the pure force that flows through me, I leave it with an evil eye.“, Kuroo smiled and Tsukishima felt an uncanny lightness flow through his body.

Without thinking, he grabbed his bag and opened the door to the destination of their trip.

There, in the middle of cables, monitors and antennas, stood the heart of the sky tree, just waiting to be subjugated by Tsukishima.

It felt absolutely surreal when Tsukishima opened his laptop and connected the cables to each other, almost as if he was about to wake up in an alley in the rain again and notice that his entire journey was just a desperate dream attempt to deal with the oppressive reality.

Programs opened, codes flew across the screen in colorful numbers and letters, and Tsukishima's eye fixed the encryption, recognized the patterns in a matter of seconds, and Tsukishima absently typed all the commands on the keyboard.

In the meantime, Bokuto and Akaashi, arm in arm, had also found themselves in the room and watched with large eyes as Tsukishima's fingers flew over the laptop in quick commands and more and more code strands poured out on the screen.

"How far?" Kuroo asked softly, the nervousness clear in the voice, the salvation was almost palpable and it was only a few steps away from freedom.

"Right now, I just have to rewrite this last code, then-"

Tsukishima's voice broke when he suddenly heard a click and he could just spin around in the chair to see a tear gas grenade fly into their room.

The explosion ripped him off his feet and he gasped, the calls from Kuroo right next to him.

"DO NOT STOP!"

Tears ran down Tsukishima's face and he heard - oh god - he heard a scream, not sure if Kuroo or Bokuto, but it was definitely someone from his people.

The blonde tried desperately to type in the codes, the gas burned in his eyes, made breathing almost impossible, and he coughed and coughed until he could no longer see clearly.

Blindly and with a racing heart, he transmitted the last codes.

And then he hit Enter.

Tsukishima leaned against the railing of the second platform and stared into the distance.

Soft drizzle drenched his clothes and washed the dried blood in fine traces from his face.

Exhaustion gnawed at his body, and yet the young man couldn't help but stare silently at the vastness of the city below.

A noise next to him promised the appearance of another person and when familiar black hair slid into his field of vision, Tsukishima sighed softly.

"Hey." Kuroo murmured and Tsukishima tore his eyes away from the city below and looked at the other man wearily. "Hey."

The man with the black hair had his jacket wrapped around a wounded arm, and Tsukishima could safely say that he had seen more blood than ever before that day.

Kuroo rummaged in his pocket and fished out a cigarette, which he lit shortly after flicking the lighter several times and took a deep drag of the nicotine.

They were silent again and looked down onto the city, which was slowly waking up from their months of sleep.

From here the confused people looked like little ants, and Tsukishima wondered if they couldn't stay a little longer - now that it was all over, he suddenly felt overwhelmed by the thought of meeting people.

Kuroo seemed to be doing the same, because he took another deep pull and closed his eyes as the rain pounded softly against the half-destroyed glass dome behind them.

Bokuto and Akaashi had hugged each other in some distance and had been whispering for minutes now.

"We really did it, huh?" Kuroo murmured after a while and Tsukishima nodded absently.

"Yes, it seems so."

"Crazy.", Kuroo laughed softly, "Yesterday I got you on my bike because I thought you were interesting and kinda cute and now we're standing here at a height of 600 meters and saved the damn city.”

Tsukishima snorted. "Well, we haven't saved them yet. Those responsible are still running around freely. Now it's time to bring people together and hold the assholes to account in joint work."

"Pfft Tsukki, always a spoilsport. I think we saved them. After all, everyone can now use their brains reasonably well again."

With a shrug, Tsukishima nodded and leaned his head against Kuroo's shoulder, exhausted.

The man let it happen and grumbled calmly: "What are you going to do now?"

"Me? I'm going to go home and take a damn long hot bath and then I'm looking for my family. Yamaguchi is still missing his shamrock."

Although Kuroo couldn't understand this comment, the man nodded and looked around.

"I will probably look for my friend Kenma. But as I know him, as soon as his consciousness returned, he locked himself in our hall and will not leave his room for the next three years. Tragically, I can't even resent him.“, The black-haired man chuckled and giggled softly.

"Somehow ironic that I was always the one who told him that he would die if he only sat in the room at home and then I almost lost him when he left the house for once."

Tsukishima closed his eyes and murmured, "Everything will be different than before, won't it?"

Kuroo frowned thoughtfully and then said, "Yes, I think so. But we will do it together."

"Together?", Tsukishima opened his right eye and watched the soaked silhouette of the other as the latter stepped closer and without further comment put a hand over Tsukishima's shoulder.

They stayed there for a while, until Bokuto and Akaashi approached them from the side and came up to the railing.

The four men stared out into the awakening city, forever connected to what they had experienced together in the past few hours.

Akaashi took Tsukishima's hand and squeezed it lightly, a thankful smile on his lips, while Bokuto snuggled closer to his partner and Kuroo leaned his head on Tsukishima's shoulder.

And for the first time in months, a sunrise rose over New Tokyo that promised something like hope.


End file.
